Mysteries endure in old Morristown murder case

PHOTO BY KEVIN COUGHLINRetired Superior Court Judge Kenneth MacKenzie gives lectures about the gruesome triple murder that rocked Morristown in 1833. The judge displays artifacts from the fascinating case, including a news clip, the death mask of the killer and the wallet supposedly made from the killer's skin.

By Kevin Coughlin

Even by today's standards, this was an outrageous triple murder.

A newly arrived immigrant dispatched his employers -- two of Morristown's most respected citizens -- with a shovel. He buried the couple in a dung heap. Next, he clubbed their sleeping servant to death. Then he ransacked their South Street home, donned his dead boss' clothes, stole a horse from the barn and rode into the night.

Locals dubbed it the crime of the century. The 19th Century. To this day, Morristown has not seen another triple murder. Nor has it seen anything like Antoine LeBlanc's public execution in 1833 -- the last hanging on the historic Green -- or its gruesome aftermath.

JESSICA SCHONERAntoine LeBlanc used a shovel to commit his crime, the only triple murder in Morristown's long history.

"When a foreigner arrives and in two weeks commits the most atrocious crime of the century, it takes on a . . . sensational aspect," explained Kenneth MacKenzie. To make his point, he produced a leathery wallet. According to legend, it was made from Antoine LeBlanc's skin.

As a Superior Court judge, MacKenzie sometimes presided in the same Morristown court room where LeBlanc was convicted of murdering Samuel and Elizabeth Sayre and their servant, Phoebe.

On Saturday, July 26, the retired judge will return to that elegant chamber to recount the strange saga of "The Wallet Man."

It's part of the Tours @ 10:00 series, sponsored by the Morris County Visitors Center. Tickets for the 10 a.m. talk cost $10 and can be reserved at MorrisTourism.org or by calling (973) 631-5151.

The tale has gripped Judge MacKenzie, a local history buff, ever since his boyhood on Morristown's Western Avenue. The Sayre house is gone now, bulldozed for a Commerce Bank branch.

For decades, it housed restaurants and nightclubs ("Phoebe's" and "Jimmy's Haunt," among others) that boasted almost as many ghost stories as patrons.

Yet the brutal slayings alone do not account for the enduring infamy of this case. For that, one must delve into the peculiar brand of capital punishment meted to LeBlanc, a ne'er-do-well Frenchman whose demise attracted a mob worthy of Louis XVI.

One newspaper at the time estimated 14,000 to 20,000 onlookers ventured to Morristown, which then was a sleepy hamlet of about 3,000 "church-going, law-abiding people," according to MacKenzie.

JESSICA SCHONERAn artist's rendering of Antoine LeBlanc's death mask.

The nine-day trial was front-page news as far away as Philadelphia. The jury deliberated for 20 minutes.

A special gallows was constructed for LeBlanc. The traditional trap door was replaced with a counterweight and pulleys, hoisting the convicted killer eight feet off the ground, "for public viewing," MacKenzie said.

The judge recalls seeing doorstops made from these counterweights in the Morris County Courthouse in the late 1950s and early '60s, when he was an intern and a law clerk.

After the hanging, LeBlanc's body was subjected to Frankenstein-like re-animation experiments by a Princeton scientist and then dissected, by court order.

When electricity from a primitive battery was applied to the body, the only reflexive hints of life were rolling eyeballs and a contorted grin, according to the 1982 book "Murder Did Pay," by John Cunningham and Donald Sinclair.

Various accounts say the old Atno Tannery, near today's Morristown High School, turned LeBlanc's skin into souvenir wallets. MacKenzie said they were signed in 1833 by the sheriff, to guarantee authenticity!

ILLUSTRATION BY JESSICA SCHONERA depiction of researchers working under a court order to dissect the body of convicted killer Antoine LeBlanc.

At our request, MacKenzie recently borrowed one such wallet, along with a plaster death mask of LeBlanc and a yellowed pamphlet of his confession, from the collection of "a prominent lifelong citizen" for some photographs.

This bizarre case also was novel for attempted legal maneuvers that now are commonplace, MacKenzie said. Because Antoine LeBlanc could not afford lawyers, three top attorneys were appointed to represent him. "That was unheard of in those days," MacKenzie told a tour group last month.

Seeking a fair shake for their client, LeBlanc's legal team asked for jurors who were naturalized U.S. citizens. They also requested a change of venue, and a long public cooling-off period. The requests were denied.

PHOTO BY KEVIN COUGHLINA pamphlet with Antoine LeBlanc's confession in the killing of three people two weeks after the French immigrant entered the United States.

Justice was swifter in those days, with no appeals. The murders occurred in May; the trial, in August; the execution, in September. Near the end, the volatile LeBlanc confessed all to an interpreter.

His victims are buried in the Presbyterian Church cemetery in Morristown. The final resting place of LeBlanc's dissected corpse -- last unearthed near the courthouse more than a century ago -- remains a mystery.

The dramatic trial was re-enacted in the mid-1990s for Morristown's First Night, from a script based on court records. MacKenzie portrayed the LeBlanc judge, inside the same symmetrical, balconied, Georgian-style courtroom that also was the backdrop for trials of cop-killer Joanne Chesimard and LeRoi Jones (now Amiri Baraka), a poet found innocent of inciting the 1967 Newark riots. The venue has changed little over the last 175 years.

MacKenzie remembers the play as "great fun." It mixed amateurs and professional actors for four performances on New Year's Eve. The actress who played the daughter of the bludgeoned Sayres "was so good she could cry four times!"

If anyone on the First Night committee is reading this, Judge MacKenzie is ready to reprise his role.

"I still have the script," he offered.

Kevin Coughlin is a reporter for The Star-Ledger and editor of MorristownGreen.com. He can be reached at MorristownGreen@gmail.com or (973) 539-0530.

These are two of several illustrations created by Jessica Schoner, a freelance artist who resides in Denville. Schoner is a graduate of Montclair State University, where she earned a bachelor's degree in Fine Art.

The illustration on the left appears on the cover of the July 18 edition of MG, our MorristownGreen entertainment and community guide. The illustration on the right depicts the public hanging of convicted killer Antoine LeBlanc.